Artists Statement
My art is shaped by how I view the world. I do not believe that there is a state of grace in life. Life is life – it is dynamic, and it is always a struggle. Integrity, awareness, and dignity remain constants. These are elements in life that are unchanging and real that can be spent or thrown away. For me, this is the mystic and beauty of life and the underlying subject matter of all my work.
The dramas are entirely fictitious but very real. Passions and dreams and stress describe reality better than physical descriptions of objects.
I said in an earlier artist statement that truth is an orphan waiting to be named – once named it becomes a lie. While this may not stand up as a metaphor, I do believe it has some validity. A piece of art is a symbol that as rendered by the artist in the act of creation and has it’s own unique meaning. It can have all the nuances, history, contradictions, and flavors that a word can have when used. It is complete in itself. To over explain is like having to explain a joke – the spirit of the thing is gone.
Good art is narrative, (fighting words for some I know), where the outcome is indeterminate. It is not the job of an artist to tell people what to think; it is to see the truth and to depict it.
The artist is a mystic, “a bell weather,” a shaman, and the guy with the measuring tape mapping out the jail cell. The artist’s viewpoint is vital to our greater sanity.
About My Sculpture
“I feel very strongly that all art has narrative content in the sense that for anything to exist, there is tension and an outcome. I also feel that my art will also always have mystic content in so far that our relationship with a greater reality is part of what makes us human.”
“Art is successful to the degree that an emotional or spiritual dialogue has taken place with the viewer engaged in such a way as to engender participation in the work.”
“Sculpture is capturing the transition from one state to another; thematically through movement and tension, in composition, and in the idea that spirit can be transmuted to flesh or day.”
“My sculpture is about what makes us human and about what gives us spiritual dignity and strength. My pieces always portray a dynamic aspect of living (force and counterforce). I do this through composition, the effort, the restraint, and through the battle of spirit with the constraints of situation.”
“My feeling about art is that in any given moment, the world is filled with images and objects that entertain, dazzle and stroke the senses but that there is precious little truth in our day-to-day lives. What I am drawn to is truth, that truth is deeper than the physical shell that houses it, that truth is a subjective vision.”
